I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data processing. More particularly, the present invention relates to quantitative measurements of applications at one or more computers in a multiprocessor computing environment.
II. Background and Material Information
In multiprocessor computing environments, such as distributed, parallel, grid, or peer-to-peer computing environments, an application may be instantiated (or executed) on a computer. However, the source of an application that will be instantiated on a computer may not have any information concerning the state of the computer or the state of any applications on the computer. The lack of such state information may become a concern when there are insufficient resources at the computer to accommodate a new application. When there are insufficient resources at the computer, the performance of the computer and its applications degrade. For example, computer performance degradations may occur when there is insufficient memory at the computer or when CPU (central processing unit) utilization is too high. Performance degradations of an application can manifest themselves when the application has too many incoming calls, too many started threads, and the like.
In a multiprocessor computing environment, knowledge of performance degradations can be used to decide whether to open a new instance of an application (or execute the new application) at a computer. For example, in a multiprocessor environment, a source computer may prefer instantiating a new application at a computer with sufficient resources to avoid having any performance degradations. In contrast, if a new application is instantiated (or executed) at a computer with insufficient resources, it is more likely that performance degradations will impact the computer or the application.